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By Root 482 0

Giiyoganebii as he was called, the one who had danced. All right, that was how things were with my back then. I told him I was feeble. “Yes,” he tells me. “But it’s like that Drum doctored you,” he said. It was then that I knew something about how these Drums help us. I was barely even ailing there in my back. So you might tell me it’s not the same, as I sit for a long time at the Drum ceremonies there. But singing for a long time there is difficult. I know. I only get sick for a little while. I’m not ill; I only get minor ailments. And I’ve never had problems with my back again—I’ve had good fortune there in being answered just like those Drums helped me through things. Those Drums have the utmost spiritual power, [like] that Ladies Drum.

[22] And one of my grandchildren was shot in the stomach over here in Minneapolis. And this body part right here—what’s it called—the spine, the bullet lodged itself right there. “There’s no way. No,” the doctor said. “And an Indian doctor won’t be able to do anything about it.” But he was indeed able to do things. “He’ll never walk,” he told me. “His spinal cord has been severed. The bullet is lodged there,” he said. Then I made a tobacco offering and put a bowl down at the Ladies Drum. At that time they had a really big dance there while he was stretched out there in the hospital, terribly ill. He was shot on a Friday, or so he told me. And then on Tuesday, he came home. He was already walking then. So he says, “I want to ask you something.” “I know,” he tells me. “What is it?” “When I was laid out there someone came to be with me,” he says. “When I peeked there I knew who he was. There was nobody else there. I was only going to know these beings that were there while I was lying down. Then I started to get well,” he says. “They didn’t speak English. And I’m not good at talking Indian here.” So there, right there I made a tobacco offering and I requested that he be watched over by the Spirit. Then that boy was healthy, and he is still.

[23] “This is what’s been done. Despite your crying about your back, nothing ever came of it. And this is despite the fact that what did happen could have caused paralysis.” That’s what that Indian doctor said there. And then to a greater extent, to a much higher degree did I come to understand how [critical] it is to help the Indian when he thinks of his tobacco to make an offering of it at the Drums. The head Spirits carry those Drums, that’s what I was always told. And those Drums in turn carry you wherever you go and wherever it might be that you want to go as you make a tobacco offering. That’s how you are looked after. Again when I give speeches about these things, when I make requests to these [Spirits] that you’ll be carried so they will come, come in a good way. And when you leave somewhere you care for them in a good way so that you’ll see them again. That’s what I was told.

The Sacred Art of Hunting

[24] Hey, I want to tell you a little bit more about this here. There is still more that I remember in the morning about what has come to pass. Again in these things my mother’s younger brother was blessed as well. My mother’s younger brother killed nine deer, that Animikiins as he was called, he killed nine white-tailed deer; he killed all those deer. Then one time as he prepared to kill the tenth one, he saw a buck there, right there as we were crossing the highway. And so he shot him. “But after a while he was just standing there in the shadows,” he said. “I just stared at him the whole time,” he says. “What the heck am I doing,” he says. “Then that deer there disappeared as he was standing there in the shade, this big buck,” he said. He didn’t shoot him again. “Then he took off running,” he says. “And I was considered [blessed] in that.” He had killed too many of them. Something would have happened to him if he had killed that tenth one. So he was being watched over in a good way, at least that’s what he came to say of it, and he used to put tobacco down every time he went hunting; he would put that tobacco out. I used to help him when he